Sunday in the Park with Ru

 

This is my soul food. Sitting on a park bench, overlooking snow-capped mountains and a tranquil ocean, listening to birdsong on the breeze that stirs my hair, scenting the sea in each conscious breath. I am warm in the sun and caressed by the wind, connected at once to the earth and the divine, a tiny (but significant) part of a greater whole.

Sometimes I’m too restless to sit, so I walk among the trees. It’s a different kind of soul food in the forest. While the infinite horizon and big sky are cleansing, the forest is nurturing and intimate. Tender in a manner that eludes even a calm day by the water. I feel present and presence, as if the trees themselves are welcoming me into their company. Whether I’m by the ocean or in the woods, I always emerge from the park with a renewed sense of strength, hope and peace of mind.

It’s become a weekly ritual. Ter drops me on Sunday morning and I spend some time feeding my soul. It’s been sunny through most of May, but this morning I woke to clouds and a damp chill in the air. I’d planned to bring the Canon this week, so when Ter asked if I still wanted to go, I said why not? No rain was predicted and my camera has a “cloudy day” setting. I put on my hoodie and off we went.

I sat for a while by the water, marvelling at the mirror surface of an ocean that’s rarely so still. There was no wind to speak of, though the birds across the cove were almost hysterical in making such a racket that meditation was darned near impossible. I spied an eagle cruising close to their trees—didn’t get a photo, but concluded that warning shots were being fired in defence of offspring. Nature isn’t always benign and peaceful.

When the not-predicted rain started to sprinkle, I left the open ocean for the shelter of the wood. I have to say, the woods might be my favourite place on a damp day; the foliage is lush and the scent intoxicating, not to mention that wondrous sense of being alive within a living entity. It’s utterly remarkable. Anyway, I wandered the trails and took a bunch of photos, particularly fascinated by the tiny bursts of colour amid the omnipresent green, until my phone binked to advise that Ter was on her way. By then I had hiked around the park’s perimeter, even finding myself on the street when the trail I was on took me between residential properties.

“Did you have a good time?” Ter asked when I got into the car.

“Yep,” I replied. “Time for tea!”

Because the best thing about this cloudy chilly sprinkly Sunday in the park was knowing that a warm, dry home awaited when I was done.

With love and gratitude,

Better Times Ahead

Life is pretty good. My problems are all First World. This isn’t a negation of their existence, it’s just a recognition that problems of any ilk are relative.

Relative, not relatives.

Change continues. How I feel about some things has shifted, and that shift has resulted in an uncomfortable dissatisfaction and the prevailing sense that it’s time for Ter and me to move on.

I rounded the corner from Clover Point after work one day and was amazed to see the beauty in the above photo sitting a stone’s throw off the breakwater, so close to shore that I initially feared she’d run aground. In truth, I have no idea how deep the water is, though the Swiftsure yacht race starts from here every year, so it must be deep enough. In any event, the appearance of this one was so rare as to inspire as much concern as wonder. As I watched, however, she floated gently in a circle, presenting me with her profile and her dinky dinghy trailing aft. Ah, I thought, she’s dropped anchor … but why? There was no one on deck, no activity in the surrounding water. She was like a ghost ship, appearing from nowhere for no discernible reason, destined to depart in silence.

Twilight fell. Closing up the Ocean Room at bedtime, I saw that the ship was still in the bay, her dual masts now floodlit and the cabin sparkling with lamps set in the windows. She was the most beautiful thing I had seen in that patch of water, ever. So calm, so serene. The ocean itself was uncommonly tranquil, seemingly respective of her placid majesty. The sky darkened and she glowed more brightly, as suffused with mystery as she was with light. I was mesmerized. I was also certain that she’d be gone the next morning.

I got up in the middle of the night to check. By then the sky was so black she stood out as a constellation, a series of jewels strung in sequence to suggest the shape of a sailboat, but she was still there. She was still there at six a.m., backlit by the dawn, as stunning in silhouette as she had been awash in spotlight. I couldn’t figure it out. I had still seen no people, and the dinghy still bobbed about on its tether.

It was my day off, fortunately. I sent Ter to work and started my routine—dusting and yoga, to be followed by meditation in advance of being a writer. Sometimes I practice the meditation on my yoga disk. More often of late, I practice a mediation that Ter downloaded some months ago, but it’s on the computer so I have to set up in the Ocean Room. Just past nine o’clock, I walked into the OR and there she was, our mysterious maiden, cruising nonchalantly away from the shore on her way to … where?

Neither her presence nor its effect on me made any sense. I only know that it struck a profound chord at the time … and today I see a symbolism that could apply to our time in this locale.

She came from nowhere, she created something wondrous, then she sailed for her next port of call.

Okay, Universe. Bring me that horizon.

Oceanic

I have lived near the ocean for most of my life. It’s a bit like living in Paris: drive past the Eiffel Tower every day and, eventually, you just don’t see it anymore. I’m no sun worshipper, either. I have rarely spent more than a couple of hours at a time on the beach, and even then my beach time was accumulated in Europe a gazillion years ago. (The tan lines on my back took two years to fade.) It’s been enough for me to know it’s there when I want it—hop in the car and twenty minutes in any direction brings you to a patch of the coast, be it sandy, rocky, sheltered or open horizon.

On a trip to Edmonton in 1992, Ter and I visited the museum. The big draw at the time was a cetacean exhibit featuring whales and other “everyday” west coast critters—otters, herons, indigenous fish, etc. A horde of curious prairie dwellers had gathered, rightfully ooh-ing and ah-ing, around the life-sized model of an orca that, quite frankly, I barely noticed. I think I glanced at it, thought, oh, yeah—orca, then said to Ter, “Where are the dinosaurs?”

That was my first hint of how blessed I am to live beside wild water.

Only lately have I realized how therapeutic the ocean has been in my life. Almost inherently, I am drawn to it when distressed or frazzled. When my bones were new and thrice-weekly physiotherapy sessions were located in the Cook Street village, my mother often drove the long way home, cruising along Dallas Road in the big blue Mercury so I could look out at the water. My favourite ocean was deep blue with scattered whitecaps. I was so fixed on watching the waves that I forgot, for a moment, how much my joints hurt.

Over the years, my colour preference has shifted like the ocean itself, from deep blue with whitecaps to grey-green with whitecaps, but these days it varies. The one constant is whitecaps. Better yet, give me surf. Now that I live across the street from the very stretch of Dallas that Mum drove in the old days, I can lie in bed at night and hear the ocean boom as it hits the shore. I get up early on weekends and visit the beach, watching the birds and the waves and losing track of time. On work days, I deliberately choose a walking route from the limo stop that takes me home along the cliffs, just because I can. And the other night, after a particularly weird-energy day, Ter and I wandered across the street to “the finger” and watched the tide crash against the beach. Unsettled and weepy when we started, a half-hour later, I was cracking up as she danced along the breakwater. No drugs, no booze. Just wind and playful water, and we were healed.

Never underestimate the power of the ocean. Sure, it can take out entire villages in a tempest, but in a gentler mood, it can lull a babe to sleep and ease the edgiest adult. When I spend time beside it, be it on a workday evening or a Sunday morning, I always come away recalibrated.

Ocean Therapy

Looking at the ocean through my living room window, I remain amazed at my good fortune to have landed in this plum spot. People come from all over to walk/drive along the water and here I am right across from it.

For me, Dallas Road has long been synonymous with the moments “in between”, particularly when my arthritis was new and the then-CARS (Canadian Arthritis and Rheumatism Society) was housed in the Cook Street village. Three times a week, my mother would pick me up from school and take me to physio. After my treatment, I’d sometimes ask if we could drive home along Dallas Road. It was the longer route, but Mum often obliged.

To this day (if I’m not driving), I stare out the car window and remember those drives—moments of limbo when I didn’t think or worry or fear. I just watched for whitecaps on the waves.

I still do that. Now I can do it on my sofa with a cup of tea and silly jazz playing, but I acutely remember riding in the big blue Merc, being more intent on the colour of the sea than the state of my bones and, in some way, being grateful for that moment.

How precious those moments were.

And are.

The Importance of Tea (Part VI)

“Safetea”

The first day of autumn blew in on a strong wind complete with rain and a stormy sea. It also coincided with the Tour de Victoria, which happened to roll past my window en route, one hopes, to someplace warm and dry. At midday it occurred to me that I was missing an opportunity to see a bunch of crazy people cycle by, so I carried my tea tumbler full of Persian Apple to the Ocean Room and settled on the sofa to watch the race for a bit.

I love wild water. The sea at its feistiest is a momentous sight. Grey-green waves laced with foam, pounding the beach right across the street. Rain coming sideways, driven by the same wind that has the trees dancing to its music. Part of me yearns to go out in it, to experience firsthand the smells, the sounds, the sights of Nature doing her darndest to remind us that, ultimately, she rules and we’ll just have to work with it.

Problem is, much as I long to stand in the teeth of it, those teeth are cold, wet and sharp. Only a fool would willingly succumb to that longing. Or, in the case of racing cyclists, a number of fools.

Nope, a sensible person curls up in a warm room with a steady supply of tea on the steep and watches the show from a safe haven.

Yes, I am immensely grateful that I have that warm, safe haven. I can afford to rhapsodize about stormy weather because I have the good fortune to be sheltered from it.

The vibe indoors was no doubt influenced by the energy outdoors; I had real trouble wanting to write, let alone knowing what to write. I spent most of the morning reading over things, trying to get a bead on something that would trickle into flow. I get rattled and restless when the wind is up – a reminder that I, too, am a creature of Nature and susceptible to the same energy patterns as everything else on the planet. It’s a harder fight on that sort of day, to be content, to be creative, even to be optimistic. So it was good for me to take my tea into the OR and observe the conditions from a happy place. It made me grateful and even a bit creative, ’cause that’s when I saw the paradox of heinous outside, peaceful inside, and the importance of tea in the situation. I grabbed the Canon, set up the shot and hit the button.

Instant post.

Life is good.